Uber Eats drivers now have the option to shop, check out items

What it means for delivery

Everyone is building the same business. While this service is relatively new to Uber, it’s familiar to consumers. That’s because Instacart popularized the model of working with on-demand couriers to grab items from shelves and deliver them. Uber Eats started in a different place, initially by offering meal delivery. But it has since expanded to deliver items from retailers, and offering a marketplace where users can shop items. This adds another layer to that experience.

Fulfillment savings. Anytime delivery is involved, costs become a big issue. Providing fulfillment can be resource intensive, even as it provides great service to shoppers. That's especially true in grocery, which often involves many items across a variety of categories. Employing existing drivers is one way to potentially create more efficiency. Uber didn’t release any data on this. But since the service is expanding, it’s a good bet that there are cost advantages to be had. Intriguingly, this return to the older Instacart model skips over the generation of instant delivery startups that provided fast delivery from out-of-store fulfillment sites. That model became popular in the pandemic, but has since faced challenges in realizing cost-effectiveness amid a return to more in-person shopping and a venture capital pullback when the market turned.

It’s not just the app. It’s people. Uber’s update implicitly acknowledges that consumers are not its only users. Couriers are users of Uber’s technology. Given their role in Uber’s business model, they are a constituency that must be served in and of themselves. While Uber’s model has long recognized this as it employed drivers, the additional shopping and payment work that is now being completed outside of a vehicle brings added complexity. Listening to this group and understanding their needs will be important to the success of this expansion, right alongside the effectiveness of the technology that is implemented.